I got both 32 and 64 bit DVDs in the box.
I decided to install the 64 bit version for a change.
Fortunately Windows detected and installed the 64 bit drives for most of the devices and I was able to get the 64 bit drivers for the remaining from the Dell website.
The sad part is that there are not many 64 bit applications available.
The biggest disappointment is that Adobe has not yet developed 64 bit versions of Flash and Flex. Also Firefox does not have an official 64 version in place.
Java has a 64 bit runtime in place, but the not many applications support it. (Not even Open office!)
Even Visual Studio 2008 does not come in 64 bit flavour, and even Visual studio 2010 won't have 64 bit support (But Office 2010 would).
However SQL server Express editions do come in 64 bit versions... Looks like 64 bit apps are currently targeted only towards the Enterprise
So how do the 32 bit applications run on the 64 bit OS.
In the 64 bit OS there are separate program files folders one regular 'Program Files' for the 64 bit apps and the other 'Program Files (x86)' for the 32 bit ones. There are two separate versions of 32 and 64 bit Internet Explorer.There are even separate versions of cmd.exe on the machine. WOW64(Windows On Windows 64) emulation program is responsible for running 32(x86) bit programs to in a 64 bit(x64) OS
Though the 64 bit windows lets you run the 32 bit applications as well, the performance is expected to be slightly less as compared to on a 32 bit OS, since the 32 bit apps have to be emulated to the 64 bit environment during runtime.
One of the reasons for lack of 64 bit applications could be the lack of low level 64 bit components which these applications rely on.
I hope that people start developing 64 bit versions for the desktop applications soon.
